Video conferencing technologies have become increasingly commonplace. As globalization continues to spread throughout the world economy, it is increasingly common to find projects where team members are widely distributed across continents. Video conferencing has long been considered a critical technology to reduce high travel expenses for distributed work-forces.
During a teleconference or other video conferencing session, individuals may “interact” and engage in face-to-face conversations through images and sound captured by digital cameras and transmitted to participants. There is a growing reliance on such network-based video conferencing and video chat applications and services, such as Skype®, Google Chat®, and iChat®. Nevertheless, even with high end teleconferencing solutions face-to-face meeting is usually still a better experience than remote meetings.
In some cases, there may be video conferences where participants wish to move through their environment or otherwise change their physical position. A video conference session in which there is real-time variability in the physical position of participants(s) relative to a camera or to one another may preclude the capture of a consistent or reliable view of the participants(s) for the remote users. One of the factors that is known to be essential for face-to-face communication is eye contact. Eye contact can instill trust and foster an environment of collaboration and partnership. Lack of eye contact, on the other hand, may generate feelings of distrust and discomfort. Unfortunately, eye contact is usually not preserved in typical video conferencing. Although various techniques have been employed for improving the quality of video conferencing, there remain significant areas for new and improved ideas for capturing and presenting video in video conferencing sessions.